


The Red And The Blue (The Ancients Touch Your Face)

by greenkangaroo



Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen, clan traditions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-26
Updated: 2016-11-26
Packaged: 2018-09-02 06:28:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8654290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenkangaroo/pseuds/greenkangaroo
Summary: There is something that they say, the Akimichi, when a Matriarch or Patriarch dies.





	

“The Ancients touch your face.” 

That’s what they say, the Akimichi, when a Patriarch or Matriarch dies, and another takes their place. 

Shikaku Nara has personally heard it said in context twice. The first time he was a young boy, barely eight. The second time he was nineteen. 

It’s the second time he remembers most vividly, not because he is incapable of recalling the first experience; total recall is both his blessing and his curse, after all. No, the second time is more vivid because it was more important. 

It was more personal. 

It was during the war. They had fought to a bloody standstill, called to the front to power through a particularly vicious group of enemies. Inoichi had taken a deep wound to the side, Shikaku had run out of shuriken, and Chouza was more than winded, his seemingly eternal chakra reserves finally reaching their limits. Victory was declared theirs but they were too exhausted to properly claim it. Instead the Ino-Shika-Cho trio helped set up a base camp. Runners were sent and the dead were counted. 

It had been Inoichi who noticed, as a mednin saw to him, that the seals on Chouza’s face had changed color. 

They were no longer the same red as his hair but blue- the blue of skin without oxygen, of a sky before the gray of rain swallowed it. 

Neither of them had been able to force out a word before Chouko appeared from the back ranks, where she had been guarding the supplies with her cousins. Chouza’s little sister, normally so bouncy and full of infectious good cheer, looked exhausted and grim. 

Chouza spotted her from where he was standing guard over the makeshift hospital. Eyebrow raised, he waited. Chouko, unusually fast for a member of her Clan whether walking or running, seemed to slow to the pace of a snail. 

When she reached her brother she lifted her big, soft hands and cupped Chouza's cheeks. 

“The Ancients touch your face,” she whispered, and began to sob. 

Shikaku remembers what came next in a clinical way he has perfected over years of war and too few years of peace. 

He remembers Chouza embracing his sister and letting her cry, sacrificing precious time. 

He remembers Chouza informing Captain Kakashi that he needed to return to the last outpost, because his Clan needed immediate direction. 

He remembers Chouza picking up his bo pole and striding away from the churned and bloody mud of their battlefield like he wasn't exhausted, like he hadn't completely run out of chakra, with Chouko trailing in his shadow. 

Shikaku remembers best how resigned his friend was, as though the death of Akimichi Choumaru had been a foregone conclusion, a contract that just waited to be signed. 

(Shikaku knows now that this is precisely how Chouza looked at it; he knows why the Akimichi have so many children, and he knows why so many of them become guards on Konoha’s outer wall.) 

Shikaku does not know, for sure, how the Akimichi family seals work. He understands the basics in the same way Chouza and Inochi understand the technicals of a shadow possession jutsu but there are secrets there that even they can’t share with one another. They are buried too deep, they mean too much. 

Shikaku has educated guesses that are probably very close to the truth and he keeps them to himself. You don’t go throwing around words like ‘blood seal’ where just anyone can hear. 

When he meets Chouji for the first time, all small and pink and swaddled in one of his dead grandfather's favorite shirts, Shikaku can’t help but trace those little red spirals. They seem too big on such tiny cheeks. 

“Butterfly tongues.” Chouza tells his friends with a soft smile which crinkles the blue streaks Shikaku has learned to hate. 

Chouji will grow, and the spirals will grow with him, their color staying true. Shikaku knows that eventually, his brat and Chouza’s brat and the brat Inochi’s wife is about to drop will meet. 

They will be friends, because teamwork is the most efficient when the team is friendly. 

They will be allies, because the Yamanaka, the Nara, and the Akimichi have been allies since before Konoha was a mote in some mad Senju’s eye. 

There will be a day on some blood-churned battlefield when the next Shika and the next Ino will listen as another Akimichi tells their Cho, “The Ancients touch your face.” 

Those spirals will turn blue. 

Chouza will go up in smoke like Choumaru and Chohana and all the other Chos before. 

Shikaku thinks, selfishly, that he never wants to hear the words again. He doesn’t tell Chouza this. He watches the sky, he drinks sake, and he waits for red to turn to blue.


End file.
